After a week in Bath and a week outside DC (which were added to the trip when I discovered daycare was closed for a 2 week summer break) it was time for the main event finally! (The weekend of the 7th was my original travel plan). My good friend John got married on a farm outside Charlottesville. John and his then girlfriend came out to visit a few years ago and she was awesome so not surprisingly their wedding was adorable, fantastic and a ton of fun!
The setting was gorgeous and the Free Union Fireworks show that followed the wedding was one to rival Dr. Bill's.
The only thing I'd nitpick would be John's choice to get married when it was 100+ degrees out with seemingly 100% humidity. Please work on that next time John :-) Because of the aforementioned fireworks and late evening the kids stayed with my parents and they brought them up to join me for Sunday brunch. Without kids and pets and in a nice king sized bed I somehow managed to still wake up at 7am. Awesomesauce. At least it gave me more time to visit with friends. We then headed back to Northern Virginia. When I went to put this vacation on the calendar I noticed that the Watsons were flying out to see us later so I stayed a few more days so I could have some extra hands on the plane (thus extending my original 3 day vacation to almost 20. Oops!)
The last few days in No.Virginia I squeezed in a lot of visiting with friends and family we had missed the first week. There were still dear friends I missed this trip so it looks like we'll have to head out again soon :-) One day we met up with friends at Frying Pan Park. Matthew was not keen on getting his picture taken, but enjoyed the tractors:
And if you ask him, he likes to talk about splashing in the puddles with friends and feeding the goats. Unfortunately these are fairly accurate, so for my boy who normally remembers everything we'll just pretend he's using his imagination:
We tried to take a group picture of the kids and all of our shots are a hilarious mix of kids looking in all directions as shared on the Facebook. As I scrolled through mine, you can see Matthew look over at a friend (who was sticking his tongue out), decide to stick his tongue out, and then look back over just to make sure his new friend saw:
We stayed with Uncle Matt for this part of our visit. The kids enjoyed his house, and mostly his toys. Matthew went through Uncle Matt's bookshelf and pointed out the toys he wanted for his birthday. Catherine was pretty happy just loading this gun:
They also enjoyed the bouncy animals near Uncle Matt's apartment:
Of course, Uncle Matt had to join in. If I remember correctly, here Matthew is feeding the horse the branch (in the eye) after he had filled the horsey up with gas. I mostly enjoyed watching Uncle Matt navigate the toy (especially since Matthew insisted he sit on the smallest one.)
The kids had their first ice pops. They were both pretty pleased, though Catherine needs some technique work:
We also headed down to Maryland to visit some of James' family. We had a great visit to their completely charming farmhouse and farm. Catherine got a bit toasty and rocked a sweaty Mohawk just before she passed out on the car ride home.
We also stopped into Meadowlark Gardens to check out the flowers and animals. Matthew was less than impressed with the heat and my trying to take his picture but loved the animals.
"Really mom? It's hot!"
I played around and got a few decent flower shots, meanwhile poor Catherine got the shaft as she rode in the backpack the whole time.
We ended our visit with a trip for free Slurpees. We thought 3 would be plenty but Catherine has quite the sweet tooth.
Once she demolished Uncle Matt's, Matthew shared his as well:
All in all, a great visit. We had a fairly late flight home that tested my patience with my children but they were troopers (even if Matthew held true to his "no sleep on airplane" statement, specifically 7 hours past his bedtime) and it was AWESOME to have two extra sets of hands on the airplane and an extra lap for Catherine to crawl into, over, under, around etc.
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